06 August 2012

Media has reported that India had recently signed a deal with the US worth several crore rupees for procuring M-4 carbine rifles for the Army's eight Special Forces battalions.The guns were used by the US Navy SEALS to shoot down Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan's Abottabad in Operation Geronimo.

The Parachute Regiment has ten battalions under it and eight of them have been trained as Special Forces, which are supposed to carry out counter-terrorist operations during peacetime and sabotage enemy installations beyond enemy lines during wars.

The Special Forces battalions include the 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, and 21 para units, which are deployed in different sectors of the country and have also been given responsibility to handle any 26/11 type attacks if they occur near their area of deployment.

The Army wants to increase the number of Special Forces troops to more than 10 battalions with around 700 men in each.

Media has not reported which make, variant or type of M-4 Carbine Rifle Indian special forces will get.

Know about American M-4 carbine rifles –

On July 1, 2009, the U.S. Army took ownership of the M4 design from its manufacturer Colt.This means that US Army can license another gun maker to produce the weapon for less.

US is using M-4 more than 40 years.

The M4 has largely replaced the submachine gun in military use due to increased use of body armor, as SMGs firing pistol-power cartridges are unable to penetrate modern body armor.

On 21 April 2012, the US Army announced to begin purchasing over 120,000 M4A1 carbines to start reequipping front line units from the original M4 to the new M4A1 version.

The possible successor to the M4 carbine in the U.S. Army is the Individual Carbine. This program is to provide a new carbine for the Army,

The M4 carbine is heavily used by the U.S military. The most current version of the M16 – the M16A2 “Commando” – is the combat weapon of choice for the U.S. Marine Corps.

The M4 carbine is a family of firearms tracing its lineage back to earlier carbine versions of the M16 rifle, all based on the original AR-15 rifle designed by Eugene Stoner and made by ArmaLite.

The M4 is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle, with 80% parts commonality.

It is a gas-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed, selective fire, shoulder-fired weapon with a telescoping stock.

A shortened variant of the M16A2 rifle, the M4 has a 14.5 in (370 mm) barrel, allowing its user to better operate in close quarters combat.

The M4 has selective fire options including semi-automatic and three-round burst (like the M16A2 and M16A4), while the M4A1 has the capability to fire fully automatic instead of three-round burst (like the M16A1 and M16A3).

The carbine is also capable of mounting an M203 grenade launcher (the M203A1 with a 9-inch barrel as opposed to the standard 12-inch barrel of the M203 used on the M16 series) as well as its successor, the M320 grenade launcher.

The United States Marine Corps has ordered its officers (up to the rank of lieutenant colonel) and Staff Non-commissioned officers to carry the M4 carbine instead of the M9 handgun. This is in keeping with the Marine Corps doctrine, "Every Marine a rifleman". The Marines however chose the full-sized M16A4 over the M4 as its standard infantry rifle.

there are some common complaints. M-4 requires constant maintenance and is prone to jams.The M4 tends to jam at a much higher rate than newer weapons -- in a 2007 dust test, the weapon jammed four to seven times the rate of the competition.use of the M4 carbine assault rifle in dessert environments and urban areas has been problematic. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have found that the weapon frequently jams in dusty and sandy locations.the M4 finished dead last in a sandstorm reliability test, against 3 competitors that include a convertible M4 variant. Worse, the 4th place M4 had over 3.5x more jams than the 3rd place finisher.

According to briefing documents obtained by Gannett’s Army Times magazine:

USMC officials said the M4 malfunctioned three times more often than the M16A4 during an assessment conducted in late summer 2002 for Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, VA. Malfunctions were broken down into several categories, including “magazine,” “failure to chamber,” “failure to fire,” “failure to extract” and “worn or broken part,” according to the briefing documents. During the comparison, the M4 failed 186 times across those categories over the course of 69,000 rounds fired. The M16A4 failed 61 times during the testing.

The Army conducted a more recent reliability test between October 2005 and April 2006, which included 10 new M16s and 10 new M4s…. On average, the new M16s and M4s fired approximately 5,000 rounds between stoppages, according to an Army official who asked that his name not be released.”

What will replace M-4 –

American Army has already posted a “Request For Information” to find out what industry has to offer as a successor to the M4.

specialized units such as Delta Force have already retired the M4 in favor of other, newer weapons.